Rugby league superstar Johnathan Thurston has made a young fan’s dreams come true.
Queensland playmaker Thurston presented his signature headgear to a young outback NT boy last weekend.
“I slept with it on that night … my friends are all so jealous,” Katherine nine-year-old Cohen Jarrett said.
Cohen and his mother travelled three hours to attend the sell out game between the Parramatta Eels and the North Queensland Cowboys in Darwin on Saturday night.
“I never thought I would get JT’s headgear,” a triumphant Cohen said.
The Cowboys captain has made a habit of giving his headgear to a fan after the game and always hands his kicking tee to a ball boy after taking a shot.
Last weekend it was nine-year-old Cohen who was left speechless by JT’s generosity.
The Jarrett family moved from Childers in Queensland to Katherine a little more than a year ago.
Thurston, who was instrumental to the Cowboys demolition of the Paramatta Eels on Saturday night hand picked Cohen from the crowd as he left TIO stadium.
“I never thought that I would get JT’s headgear, but at full time my mum said I should go down and try,” Cohen said.
“I was yelling at him, ‘JT JT come here’.
“I just grabbed it and put it up in the air and started shouting.”
“He was nearly falling over the fence,” ecstatic mother Renae Jarrett said.
“He came up to me and was shaking, I think he was in shock.
“Now he is on the hunt to go to an Origin game and an Australian game to get more headgear.”
Thurston, who gave away another helmet at halftime, scored a try and converted it in the sweaty headgear he gave to Cohen.
Cohen said he was sad when his rugby idol Thurston was forced to sit out of Origin I.
“We would have won if he played.”
The nine-year-old plays under 10s Junior NRL on Sundays at Katherine Town Oval.
Cohen wants to be a conversion kicker like JT when he is older.
It has been estimated that Thurston has given away $40,000 worth of headgear in recent years, more than what his sponsorship with manufacturer Madison is worth.
